Writer's Cramp: Another day...

The spaceship landed with a heavy thud. Dust whorled out from beneath, glittering red and yellow like tiny meteor showers. The light of the two suns suspended above beat down relentlessly, illuminating the battered exterior. Flames flickered by the warp engines.

Inside the ship, a heated discussion - in both the compartive and literal sense - echoed through the lonely corridors.

'If those flames touch the reactor, we're completely screwed.'

'Don't you think I know that? Christ, get the bucket already. Where the hell is the Captain? What is he doing? He's not responding to the intercom.'

'He was in the cockpit with Ella. No doubt she's throwing a hissy fit about her precious ship being shot at.'

'She'll throw a hissy fit if we so much as looked at the ship wrong.'

'Heh, that's true.' Suddenly, the clutter of shoes on the metal floor halted. 'Oh.'

'Oh? What's the -' another pause. 'Oh.'

Flames spewed out, blazing a trail of melting, blackened liquid. The walkway resembled little more than a living furnace. The speakers looked on in mild horror. The taller of them, a human male, held a bucket forlornly in his hand. The woman next to him, Akari, blinked, and coughed from inhaling the flames. Horns curled on either side of her head.

'We're not gonna get through there. I hope Drax and Nadia aren't trapped.' Akari winced, pulling out her breather from her pocket. 'Makes you wish we fixed the sprinkler system when it broke a few weeks back.'

'Makes you wish we had a hell of a lot more things than a floating tin box and a bunch of crazies.'

'Ha ha. Seriously. We need to focus on task here,' Akari said, rolling her eyes.

'When every task we do ends up with us hanging on by the skin of our teeth, you learn to find the funny in everything.'

'Lewis!' Akari snapped. She placed a finger on top of the breather, the universal quiet sign. He nodded, clenched his jaw and flung the contents of the bucket into the offending flames, doing nothing whatsoever to diminish their hungry burble.

'Lets backtrack.'

They clunked out of sight.


**


Meanwhile, in the engine room, Nadia and Drax managed to get the worst of the damage under control. Communcations had fallen with the first initial burst of bullets in space. The last thing either of them heard before the intercom frazzled out was the angry pilot, Ella, shouting about the damage, and the Captain trying to calm her down before she crashed them into the overhanging mountains of the desert planet, turning their smouldering ship into space junk; something that tended to happen a lot. Hastily rendered patches covered the slanted walls, sealing the room, and the last of the flames were being beaten out by Nadia with a blanket.

'This makes us feel so professional,' Drax commented, chuckling. He stroked the engine, checking for any excessive damage done. Nadia grinned, a few droplets of sweat gleaming off her face.

'It's just another day in the office for us.' Nadia straightened up, and rolled her shoulders. 'When we're not being shot at, or being wanted terrorists in three nations, or blowing up stuff in the name of freedom, or - '

A bucket was kicked into the room.

'- Glad to see you guys didn't kick the bucket,' Lewis interrupted, stepping into the room. he glanced back at Akari. 'But she did.'

'Did you really have to do that?' Drax groaned.

'What can I say? It was punny,' Lewis smirked. 'But being serious, we've got quite a fire cooking up two of the eastern corridors. I guess the Captain and Ella are okay though. We got deadlocks on the main burn areas now, which means they'd have to be alive to invoke the damn things.'

'Yay!' Nadia cheered. Her braided hair bounced as she did a little jump into the air.

'To be safe, we better steer clear of Ella,' Lewis added. Akari snorted, relaxing back on one of the chairs skewed in the engine room. She said nothing, instead idly staring up at the scratched, panelled ceiling. The others relaxed, settling down to quiet conversation as they waited for the trouble to blow over.

It didn't take long before the intercom tinged. Densell's welcome voice cut through the air. 'Fire is under control. I repeat, fire is under control. Report to me, crew. Over.'

When everyone was accounted for, Densell let out a breath of relief through the speaker. 'Good. We're going to have to abandon ship, though. Meet outside in ten minutes. Over.'

'Really!' Lewis said. 'He can be so rude, sometimes.'

TBC... Probably never.